Sanity Slippage / Music

• Songs about going insane are quite common, actually. Many examples at Sanity Slippage Song.
• "Stan" by Eminem shows the story of a fanboy with a seriously screwed-up life and a downward spiraling sanity. The video starts with Stan bleaching his hair just like Eminem's, then Stan starts writing letters to him every so often in his room all plastered with posters of Eminem, then he sends Eminem a really pissed off letter complaining about how he missed Stan and his brother at a gig. When his pregnant girlfriend scolds him for wasting his day on watching Eminem, that's the final straw on the back, and he ends up tearing all his posters, tying his girlfriend in his car's trunk, and driving off a bridge.
  • Then Eminem sends back a letter, and starts by apologizing for how long it's taken him to finally respond. Trippin'. Best part: In his response letter, Eminem decides to cite a story he heard on the news about a guy who drove his car off a bridge with his pregnant girlfriend in the trunk, in the hopes that it'll get Stan to calm down a bit. Then Eminem realizes the news story was about Stan. "Damn," indeed.
• The Nine Inch Nails album The Downward Spiral is a Concept Album that's about Exactly What It Says on the Tin: the gradual destruction of an unnamed man, from the beginning, to him attempting suicide.
• The Violent Femmes' "Country Death Song" is pure American Gothic: rural guy goes mad from isolation and boredom, throws his little daughter down a well, then broods over his guilt till...you can probably imagine.
• Heavily implied in Melanie Martinez's "Pity Party", about a lonely girl trying desperately to convince herself that it's okay that she's alone on her birthday. The music video takes it to the next level with Melanie dressed in youthful clothes smashing the elaborately decorated cake, setting the curtains on fire, and smiling at the camera.

  It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to, cry if I want to, cry, cry, cry

  I'll cry until the candles burn down this place

  I'll cry until my pity party's in flames

  • The whole album is about the main character, Crybaby, going through experiences making her more insane. "Mad Hatter", the last song of the album, clearly set up that Crybaby is now fully embracing her madness.
• Pink Floyd's The Wall chronicles a man slowly alienating himself from the world, causing his mind to collapse on itself until finally what's left of his sanity stages an intervention and forces him to actually deal with his problems.
  • The band's previous albums, The Dark Side of the Moon and (especially) Wish You Were Here (1975), were inspired by the real-life sanity slippage of former bandleader Syd Barrett, who had become impossible to work with. "Now there's a look in your eyes / like black holes in the sky". His former bandmates reluctantly dropped him and felt guilty about it ever after. The two albums were enormously successful, but the subsequent non-stop grind of touring to unappreciative audiences caused Roger Waters to suffer a sanity slippage of his own, which directly inspired The Wall. Which was an even more enormous success!
• By Coheed and Cambria's third album, the author in the frame story of their sci-fi epic has started talking to a bicycle and making both death threats and declarations of love to the ex-lover for whom he wrote the story. In the previous albums the author was not a significant character, and the only real sign of his instability was the fact he was writing the kind of material you can make a Prog Rock Concept Album out of.
• Gorillaz: Both Murdoc and 2D show signs of this as of phase 3, rambling and gibbering like never before. 2D seems a bit sharper than earlier chapters, though, while Murdoc's just gotten bolder and more malevolent.
• Napoleon XIV's immortal ''They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!!" starts off sounding like a love gone wrong, but it turns out he's addressing his dog.
• The Neighbourhood's "Wires" is about an old music friend who is suffering this and the protagonist worrying it could happen to himself eventually.
  I can hear it in your voice in your voice, you can't be treated.
  Mr. Know-it-all has his rein and his fall.
  At least that's what his brain is telling all.
  If he said "Help me kill the president" I'd say he needs medicine.
  Sick of screaming "Let us in".
  The wires got the best of him.
  All that he invested in goes straight to Hell.
• Queen has "I'm Going Slightly Mad" and, with less focus on slippage and more on the crazy, "Stone Cold Crazy."
• David Bowie's album Diamond Dogs gives us 'Candidate', where the unnamed protagonist propositions a prostitute for the night. What starts off as a drink ends up with drug-taking and joint suicide - at least in the protagonist's head.